Ancient Athens
demonstrated a demise of democracy into despair and squalor
at the hands of the voters.

Ancient Rome
recounts a reduction of a Republic into nationalist rancor
at the hands of the state.

The United States of America
is a sort-of culmination of both;
of how a Democratic Republic may fail,
impoverishing and subjugating it's own
as well as it's proximity,
reducing itself and any it can drag with it
from a respectful idealization of Human Experience
to a bloodthirsty, greedy, vapid shell
of Fascisms past.